Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991 TAG: 9103290638
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Those of us who are as addicted to movies as some people are to cocaine or booze hung on anyway; but hanging on - and watching with what sometimes rises to the level of horror - is not the same thing as being impressed, let alone believing that the Oscars mean anything much about the arts, sciences or even the competence of contemporary movie-makers.
But then the Oscars never were anything but a show of profound self-admiration by the various elements that make up what used to be called "Hollywood," and the self-admiration was fueled, in turn, by internal industrial politics of a complexity that would make a Balkan cabal wring its hands in frustration.
From the beginning, it appears, who got what award under what circumstances and for which role in which picture was beyond the real understanding of the great crowd Out There, including you and me. Oscars were intended to represent achievements that raised the quality of - in the beginning - American film-making, and so some have proved to be.
More often, however, they have proved to be a badge of present popularity within the business, popularity at the box office, ability to accommodate studio moguls (when the studio system still ruled the field) and potential for being all of the above next year.
Oscars were also given, and given frequently, to compensate for past oversights - to reward some old-timer whose work had been chronically neglected, for one reason or another, but who had proved, down the years, more durable, or maybe just more pliable, than the big shots originally believed possible.
The academy - a self-chosen moniker that seemed to lend movies an artistic dignity their early makers would have scoffed at - was founded in 1927 by Louis B. Mayer, chief operational executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and a famous vulgarian and lecher who is generally credited, among other things, with hooking Judy Garland on drugs.
Mayer, whose seamy origins he sought to conceal beneath a passion for "quality," started the academy to render public tribute to the actors, directors, writers, cinematographers and other technicians whose work deserved honor and raised standards - and, not so incidentally, both to raise the movie business in public esteem and to advertise it in a big way.
It was always popular with the public, from its first days at the old Coconut Grove, a Hollywood nightclub where the early ceremonies were held, down to today's televised extravaganza, which not only runs too long but is frequently the occasion for one disaster after another.
Americans love contests and ratings, which I state not as a criticism but as a fact in which I take part annually too, and it always draws their attention when someone is tagged Numero Uno and given a doorstop to show it. Perhaps no other ceremony in American life, not excluding the Super Bowl and the election of a new president, draws such rapt, generally naive attention. Viewers of the Oscar ceremonies, like watchers at America's other great brawls, actually believe that they are seeing something. Now and then I have slipped into the same stupor myself.
The fundamental considerations that the ceremonies are only a show, generally a shabby one, and that the Oscars themselves are given less for quality of performance than in response to intense advertising or to acknowledge some stupendous commercial success, are easy to overlook as America's royalty parade their tawdry stuff.
But what the Oscars actually mean is another matter, and even whether they pave the way for a glorious film future is dubious. Ask F. Murray Abraham.
by CNB